Greece cobbles together interim government as Italy teeters

“A new government will help,” says a skeptical Philip Whyte of the CER in London. “But even a unity government will be hard pressed to accept the measures that Greeks are being asked to swallow. Greece is having to cut spending faster than the country is presently contracting. ... The positive side of the Oct. 26 deal [by EU leaders] is that it marked the end of 18 months of a policy of denial that the whole of the region faces a pan-European banking crisis ... The problem is that what is economically achievable is politically impossible without changes in the institutional structures of the EU.”